Thursday 12 July 2018

July 12th, 1978 - Marvel UK, 40 years ago this week.

It's a tragedy that could destroy the mind of the strongest of men, because England have crashed out of the World Cup, having made the fatal mistake of scoring early, thus giving themselves the maximum possible amount of time in which to mess up.

Of course, the moment we scored, I knew we were doomed. It's a golden rule in life. Never score first. It only gives the opposition  a reason to try and beat you.

Happily, thanks to my iron mental fortitude, I haven't responded by giving up on this life and have, instead, flung myself into the task of seeing what was going on in the world of forty years ago.

In terms of news and broadcasting, not a lot was going on.

Plenty was going on on the UK singles chart but it was the same plenty that had been going on the week before.

But what of our favourite comics? Could they inject a little more intrigue than that into our lives?

Star Wars Weekly #23, Doom World

I really don't have a clue what's going on in this one but, sadly, I suspect that Doom World is not a theme park dedicated to the life and works of Doctor Doom.

Why no one has ever built such a thing, I have no idea.

Mighty World of Marvel #302, the Incredible Hulk

This is a weird one. Given that the cover features people watching a missile, I'd assumed the man with the moustache to be Tony Stark.

Further research, however, informs me that he is, in fact, Doctor Strange, a man not normally known for his interest in ballistics.

I do wonder, though, just why someone would put a pilot inside a missile. Wouldn't riding in a missile guarantee instant death upon reaching one's destination?

As for the tale, I do know it was drawn by Herb Trimpe and involves Strange mind-probing a mysterious cocoon.

From this, I conclude it must be the Hulk tale which introduces Paragon, the second attempt by the Beehive scientists to create the perfect human being, after their earlier creation of Him went so disastrously wrong.

You have to hand it to them; for a bunch of geniuses, they have a remarkable ability to not learn from their mistakes.

Super Spider-Man #283

Is this the one in which Aunt May and the Rocket Racer's elderly female relative - who might be his aunt, his mother or his grandmother - are in the same hospital as each other while the Rocket Racer and Spider-Man separately bemoan their lot in life?

It would be nice to claim this glimpse into the Rocket Racer's personal life made him a more intriguing and relatable character. The only problem with that being that, no matter what the writers did, he was a man in yellow sunglasses, riding a rocket-powered skateboard. It didn't matter how they tried, there was no way they were ever going to manage to make that not annoying.

8 comments:

Steve W. said...

Further research into the subject tells me the Spider-Man story in this issue doesn't feature the Rocket Racer in any way, shape or form. Which is good news for some of us. It does highlight how hard it is to keep track of which stories Aunt May is hospitalised in.

Killdumpster said...

There was a sci-fi movie titled The Indestructible Man, starring Lon Chaney Jr. After a death row execution doctors injectectd him with a serum that brought him back to life and made him very durable.

Aunt May's doctors were apparently working on the same kind of serum.

Killdumpster said...

"Oh, my aunt's weak heart!" MY AUNT PETUNIA!!!

Steve W. said...

Killdumpster, that is a film I definitely want to see.

Killdumpster said...

It's extremely low-budget & cheesy, but mindlessly entertaining.

dangermash aka The Artistic Actuary said...

We must be getting toward the end of the line because my memories of Super Spider-Man are getting patcier and patchier every week.

While I can't remember reading this Green Goblin storyline, I do remember Aunt May on the protest March in this issue.

Timothy Field said...

There were an awful lot of protest marches in Spidey stories of this era. Bloody hippy beatniks.

dangermash aka The Artistic Actuary said...

There were Tim, but I do remember this one in particular with Peter Parker losing his rag with the copper.